Surreal Anxieties

I’ve been sick the past few days, with what feels like the bronchitis my office mate had for the past two weeks: joint and bone and muscle aches, a rasp in the chest that’s blossoming into a productive cough, digestive yuckiness, and a pervasive droopy-lidded tiredness. So in between fits of grading, I’ve been drinking lots of juice and water, and trying to sleep as much as I can.

But that sleep’s been punctuated by whatever various symptoms waking me up, and also the bizarre half-asleep dreams about work: I’ve been absolutely certain that when I park down by the Hudson and walk up to my office, policy mandates that I investigate whether there are any fresh seafood vendors (on the Hudson?) at the Army’s South Dock, and if so, that I purchase and bring up an assortment for the Department and fill out a slip to be reimbursed. Or that rather than using the web and email to assist classroom instruction, I need to make myself a part of the growing circulating pool of cell phones in use by cadets for one-to-one communication with teachers, and that in order to do so effectively, I’ll have to set aside a significant portion of my monthly budget to add my own set of circulating cell phones to the pool. Or that I’ll mention the Kairos special issue I’m co-guest-editing to my cadets, and offer an example of the types of webtexts we’re looking for, and the cadets will communicate that to the Department, who will take said example as a promise of scholarship to be accomplished within the coming year, so I’ll set aside several hours to write a quick-and-dirty Disputatio piece, and Cheryl will like it so much (my anxieties, unfortunately, aren’t modest) that she’ll insist I write several such pieces for each issue.

Which would all be funny in their ridiculousness — fish, cell phones, mandatory Disputatio — except that for five or six hazy half-awake muddled minutes, I’ll be quite sure that I need to figure out a plan to address these tasks before I go to work the next day, and I’ll fall asleep trying to figure out which buildings the seafood vendors are hiding behind.